Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s Island People: The Caribbean and the World is not a book about your cruise-ship islands. Expect a reporter’s observant eye, trained on these mini-cultures formed by sugar and slavery.

He includes the history, with scenes of Columbus sailing up to these islands. He also covers the foal-like stumbles of tiny nations trying to run themselves after breaking free of their colonial overlords. Finally, he portrays life today and, frankly, things aren’t going that well. Or if they are, not for long. These are lands of constant national debt, of police corruption, of bad politicians making life more miserable than it already is. “You see dat?” a Jamaican taxi driver tells Jelly-Schapiro. “We all mash’ up! Politician’ mash up the country.”

Give a Jamaican, a Dominican or any other Caribbean the chance, and he heads for New York, transporting his music and culture with him. The author attended a Rita Moreno concert in Puerto Rico where the singer’s jokes brought on “homey laughter [from] this aging crowd . . . where every family’s story includes tales about heading for America, or returning home.”

I admire the author for wandering where tourists never go. I also see why they never go there. They want a vacation, not a slog through some sad little village.

He hangs with the little people. His Spanish is, no doubt, excellent. And he’s always willing to bond over a “spliff” (a fat joint) or a bottle of local liquor.

He seems to have a clear eye for what went wrong in the various little revolutions. But his heart throbs for the next one. Some people find that sort of thing so bracing! It’s the same sort people who point at these islands’ big bad neighbor to the north, or the gold-hungry explorers of centuries ago, Blame them for our problems.

Myself, I’m more reluctant to brand those explorers as greedy, having read of Europe’s struggle to fight off Muslim encroachment and find the money to pay ransoms.

Races have mixed here forever and Jelly-Schapiro, explains the racial pecking order, freely describing individuals as “cocoa”-colored, “cinnamon,” etc. I liked it, but I’m surprised he got away with it.

His early chapters covered the big familiar islands. By the time he worked his way down to the specks, I struggled, then bailed. I loved the good bits, but paid for them by wading through history and details that nobody but Jelly-Schapiro or a diplomat could care about.

Also, the guy can write mile-long sentences. If he ever produces an audio version of Island People, I might just check it out to hear whether he can read ’em in one breath.

Graphic created at Snappa.com